Birmingham Airport in the UK has broken ground on its new runway extension which should put the airport in a position to accept flights to much further destinations and with much larger aircraft.
At a time when the UK government is arguing over how to deal with the lack of capacity and runways around London, Birmingham is ideally placed only 1 hour 20 away from central London by train and still has room to grow in terms of the number of flights it handles.
The runway extension will add 405m (1,350ft) to the airport’s single runway, taking it to 3,003m in total. It is due to open in 2014. It will allow direct flights to operate from Birmingham to China, Japan, South Africa, west coast USA, and South America.
Birmingham Airport‘s CEO, Paul Kehoe, said “We have plenty of spare capacity at Birmingham now. Our passenger numbers could double from the current nine million a year to eighteen million today, and the runway extension will allow us to increase beyond thirty six million in future years.”
A dedicated website about the runway extension can be found here.
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